Winter Indoor Tomatoes variety candidates

Winter Indoor Tomatoes variety candidates

Sun Feb 17, 2013 5:52 am

I have my first cut for the winter tomato variety trial. All of them were selected for - exceptional flavor- extra early to early maturing for the most part- productive/loaded - short plants suitable for containers, though there are some exceptions particularly extra productive cherries.

There are a handful of good candidates that are not included because I didn't get seeds for them (maybe next year ).

For the trial, I'm planting some/all of them in shadier beds not normaly used for tomatoes this summer to see how well they fruit and maintain their earlier maturity and shorter stature characteristics. I plan on picking maybe 6-8 best out of these for next winter's indoor growing.

(The list is not easy to read this way, but if you are really interested, you should be able to copy and paste to a spreadsheet)

Is Jaune Flamme a dwarf? I am trying to get a little collection of dwarf/early/cold tolerant tomatoes too. Another you could consider is Totem, but it is a hybrid. Tiny Tim and Red Robin are nice dwarves too. I am growing more Tiny Tim this year. If you want a cold tolerant type but not a dwarf, check out San Francisco Fog. It held up pretty well to the cold here.

Jaune Flamme is not a dwarf but is described as "extremely prolific" and DTM of 70 days with great flavor. So it's in the list as possibly able to develop trusses from lower on the vine and be topped and still be sufficiently productive. If it fails the "shadier location" trial this summer, then it won't make the final cut.

I want to stick with OP/Heirloom varieties, but I'll add those to my list. Thanks.

I've kind of let these go too long already and i's going to be a delicate operation to upblock them, but it's really kind of neat that you can actually DISTINGUISH the true *DWARF* varieties among these seedlings. Even as seedlings, they are shorter/more compact than their brethren without the dwarf genes:

Now, I HAVE to go put up a ceiling hook so I can get the 2nd almost ready to bloom Firetail Chenille Plant out of under the upper T-5 lights and install an extra 36" T-8 strip that was delivered today for the center shelf, THEN I can move out/around some more plants, upBlock, and start some more seeds --Someone just sent me a surprise bonus seeds of more dwarf varieties.

I've already started 2 additional dwarf varieties:

Lime Green SaladRisista

As soon as the grown ones above are upBlocked, I'm starting in their places:

looking good Apple, just dropped another tray myself. It is amazing the differance between the dwarfs and the non dwarfs. It doesn't take long to notice it either. You may know but others may not, you can tell a true dwarf from a variety without the "d" gene by it's internode spacing (distance between stems/buds). On dwarfs the internode spacing is roughly half that of a non dwarf plant.

Let me know how Lime Green Salad does for you. It was/is super duper slow for me. I planted it back with the others Oct/Nov it's only 6 inches tall right now. I understand it is a short plant but that is 1.5 inches a month. Only that and CIAM still kickin it from the Winter Dwarf growing. That's okay there's 49 more coming where that came from.

Haha you got it right! The additions came in the "newbie" selection.Is the Yellow Dwarf you are growing the same as mine or is UA not sure if that's what it is. Is it a variety name? I should find out.

I Upblocked all the seedlings that were growing tall above the others in the Winter Indoor Trial microblock tray. I'll assume these don't have the dwarf gene in them. Victorian Dwarf is an anomaly as is Coyote. Victorian Dwarf was as tall as these despite "dwarf" in its name. Coyote was shorter like the others that were left in the tray, but because I was told that it grows prostrate but "takes over the garden", I decided to see how the roots were doing, and it had extensive root systems that reached three microblocks over as opposed to two blocks over for most of these.

Final list may change since * indicates seeds that didn't sprout. I think I'm going to reseed those, but may re-consider since I already have so many tomatoes growing, and chalk this up to bad luck (and better luck next year....)

Last edited by applestar on Tue Mar 26, 2013 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks, Gixx. I mis-indicated that Red House Freestanding didn't sprout, but it looks like I have one growing. I was thinking I wanted to reseed the other two you mentioned, too. Hopefully, I'll get to it today.

gixxerific wrote:Let me know how Lime Green Salad does for you. It was/is super duper slow for me. I planted it back with the others Oct/Nov it's only 6 inches tall right now. I understand it is a short plant but that is 1.5 inches a month.

I do have one Lime Green Salad sprouted -- dropped 3/5, sprouted 3/14 -- so I'll be able to report on its progress. (I wonder if it dowsn't like cool conditions?)